At the end of December I stumbled across this fantastic blog challenge. We are to hot water-bath can something new every month this year. The goal: get canning (and using, as much as possible, fresh and local produce). January's assignment: Citrus - YUMMY! I was excited, even if late getting started (no Internet service until 25 January due to our recent move on the first.) I figured better late than never and thought I'd better get a move on before the baby arrives and tried my hand at citrus!
I decided to use a variety of citrus. I chose blood oranges, sweet navel oranges, and pink grapefruit. I opted for no marmalade! I've tried marmalade all of one time - that was enough for me - yuck! Of course, it came from the store... I should try it homemade at least once before I swear it off. So, I was scared of marmalade, so I tried just simply canning the fruit - think canned mandarin oranges only better.
Peeling citrus without a handy-dandy "orange peeler" by Tupperware is not a fun task. I used to have a hundred of these little gadgets around my house. Do you think I could find just one? Nope! Peeling oranges by hand hurts! Your fingernail begins to separate from the skin at the tip of your finger allowing the citrus juice to do it's magic... not fun at all.
It sure looked nice when I was done though!!! :O)
I love the way the colors look together.
After playing around a bit with fitting the wedges into the pint jars I was using I decided I liked the rainbow look and wanted to keep it as my finished result. So, I'm calling this Rainbow Breakfast.
I peeled enough of each of the three citruses to have eight wedges of each per jar. That would make two rainbow oranges in each jar with three different colored wedges per quarter orange (12 sections per rainbow orange). It took some time to stuff those jars!
Then I filled the jars with boiling very light syrup (6 1/2 cups water with 3/4 cup sugar dissolved in it). I used part white sugar, part sucanat, which gave a beautiful honey color to the syrup. I processed the filled jars for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath (this took into consideration my altitude of 4,500-ish feet above sea level).
I got six pint jars of beautiful rainbow oranges!
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
